LimeSurvey allows users to quickly create intuitive, powerful online forms and surveys that can work for anyone from small business to large business. The survey software is self-guiding for the respondents. They have a cloud hosted option with free and paid tiers, much the same as SurveyMonkey, but there is also the Community Edition which is fully free and open source software which you can self-host. Apart from the freedoms that brings, it also means that any respondent data is also free from tracking and data mining by any 3rd parties.

In this video I tour through a sample survey that I created, where I run through the survey options, I also show how easily a new survey with questions can be started, and I end off with a run through the various general menu configuration options.

Watch https://youtu.be/tPDIO6mr-mU

#technology #opensource #limesurvey #selfhosting #surveymonkey

    • GadgeteerZAOP
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      3 years ago

      Well that is their website, so you really need to do the same test on a free blank survey created. But yes the cloud side I suppose is their income side. The point really is they do give a proper open source option and if you run that against my survey eg. https://themarkup.org/blacklight?url=survey.gadgeteer.co.za you won’t see trackers. That really was the point about the self-hosting in the first place, that you can offer the surveys without 3rd party tracking, as you host it yourself.

      • Zerush
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        3 years ago

        Agree, self-hosting is the only manner, if you own a server. This app is a German product, which generally have better privacy, but on the other hand also very restrictive condition of the use (this app shows the whole text of the legislation regarding the use of apps of this type, quite broad) Because of this, its anyway recommended to read the TOS and PP of this app, and you’ll see, that they make very clear, that they have the full copyright of this “FOSS”.

        • GadgeteerZAOP
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          3 years ago

          As I recall the trademark part only related to the name and logo of LimeSurvey itself. They said you could still use the code, change it, etc as you wanted?

          • pinknoise
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            3 years ago

            Correct, the code is GPL, everything else is FUD.

    • fleurc
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      3 years ago

      Well, if it’s open source, you can fork and remove the trackers, that’s the beauty of FOSS. Also FOSS is not inherently connected to privacy, it’s just that FOSS

      • Zerush
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        3 years ago

        Yes, if you are a programmer, no chance for the normal user. A normal user only can read PP and TOS and check the site with Blacklight and others, avoiding those apps which use this tracking systems.

        • pinknoise
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          3 years ago

          The software itself has no tracking afaik, it’s just their website.

          • GadgeteerZAOP
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            3 years ago

            You need to separate the commercial website side from the self-hosted code we can use. I posted about the self-hostable code. You are in control of the settings and can examine the code. As it comes the Google API’s etc are all blank and are options for users to use if they wish or not. Unless there is some evidence that they have embedded some evil tracking in the source code, there is no point to just supposing there is something. I did not see any evidence of trackers in the self-hostable code.

          • Zerush
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            3 years ago

            A online form from a web which use usertracking, don’t use it also in their surveysoft? Mhh, I’ve my doubts, Google has its tentacles already in too many things and obviously also in this soft. Online tools and collaborative tools are too succulent for it not to take advantage of, if he is already a sponsor of the homepage of this app.

            Well, you can opt out of being tracked by Alphabet, but you have to expressly request it in this company with your personal data and have hopes that they respect them.

            • pinknoise
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              3 years ago

              So what you’re saying is that you have no evidence to support your claim‽

  • loki
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    3 years ago

    Any good open-source self-hosted alternative to gleam io and the likes?

    • GadgeteerZAOP
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      3 years ago

      Unfortunately not - that and business platforms like LinkedIn have been difficult to replicate for some reason. The only one I’m aware of is https://github.com/vutuv/vutuv which may be worth looking at. The challenge will be how many people are there as business networks especially rely on networking. But I Must look into it a bit more and also promote it myself.